Climate change and global warming

Coral reef off the Florida coast. Conservationists and others who have worked with the DEP said it banned mention of ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’. Photograph: Alamy

The office of Florida’s governor, Rick Scott, and the state’s environmental protection department (DEP) have denied the state banned the phrases “climate change” and “global warming” from educational materials and other products.

But the president of the south Florida Audubon society has insisted to the Guardian that the agency charged with setting Florida’s environmental policy had indeed banned those phrases, and that the ban probably came “from the top.”

Audubon executive Doug Young, a member of the Broward county climate change task force, said he had undergone DEP training to become a volunteer presenter of a DEP PowerPoint presentation on Florida’s coral reefs. Young said he was surprised to discover that the PowerPoint presentation omitted all mention of climate change and its potential effects on the reefs.

“They said you can’t mention that when you do the presentation, ” Young, 63, said of the DEP employees who were training him. “I told them I have a great deal of difficulty with that.

“I found that that particular group within DEP had a gag order, ” Young said. “It’s not a mystery, it’s almost certain that that comes from the top, meaning [Governor] Rick Scott. Rick Scott does not believe in climate change.”

Related: Florida banned state workers from using term 'climate change' – report

A report published on Sunday by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting (FCIR) quoted six people, five by name, who had worked for or with the DEP as saying that the agency barred employees and contractors from using the phrases “global warming” and “climate change”.

The former DEP employees said the ban came into effect after the arrival in office of governor Scott, who is a climate change skeptic and who installed a new DEP director early in his governorship.

John Tupps, deputy communications director for Scott, denied on Monday that there was any ban on the phrases.

“I can tell you that no policy exists, and also that it’s just not true, the idea that is raised by the FCIR, ” said Tupps. “It doesn’t exist and it’s not true.”

Asked to explain why so many former DEP employees were telling the same story about a ban on references to “climate change”, Tupps said: “There isn’t a policy though, and it’s not true.”

The named sources in the FCIR report who described the DEP ban included a former attorney with the DEP’s office of general counsel, a former DEP employee in Miami, two nature writers hired to write fact sheets for the DEP, and Young.

A DEP spokesperson backed the denial from Scott’s office on Monday in an interview with the Guardian.

“It is simply not true that there is a policy prohibiting words being used, ” said Luke Strickland, the spokesman. “I can’t speculate on why former employees and people are saying that. But I can tell you that it’s simply not true, there’s no policy prohibiting the use of the words climate change or words like that.”

Asked to provide examples of the use of those phrases in DEP material, Strickland said he would send some. But then he did not.

Young said climate change should not be about politics. “Climate change is a nonpartisan issue. It’s very important in south Florida. It’s not a partisan issue. It’s a world, global issue, affects everyone.”

Source: www.theguardian.com

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What is climate change and global warming?

Global warming is the way the earth is warming globally, all over. This has been happening since we started burning fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas). The rising world temperature is making the climate change. Weather patterns that have been fairly stable for years are beginning to change more and more. This is seen in the changing weather patterns.

Climate Change or Global Warming? | Yahoo Answers

I am not that educatued but I do watch the news a bit,I would say Global Warming,I hear it will hurt the Polar bears some,I love the bears,they are just trying to survive I guess !!

Media coverage of climate change has significant effects on public opinion on climate change, as it mediates the scientific opinion on climate change that the global instrumental temperature record shows increase in recent decades and that the trend is caused mainly by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases. Almost all scientific bodies of...

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